B station UP host on Douyin: Some people have more than 20 million fans and sales of over 100,000 products, but they still can't relieve the anxiety of monetization

Introduction: The up-stopping incident on Bilibili has been a hot topic recently, and there are many different opinions on the reasons. This article proposes a new idea. In addition to the general trend of Bilibili’s own operational reform, the overall “monetization anxiety” of new media platforms has become the author’s in-depth topic.

Recently, Bilibili, which was pushed to the forefront due to the "stop updating trend" initiated by its UP hosts, has made new moves.

Recently, Bilibili announced in its official live streaming e-commerce group that its UP host cooperation platform Huohuo will open the live streaming e-commerce merchant order placement function on April 17. UP hosts who have completed live streaming e-commerce quotation can use this function, adding a new channel for the commercialization of UP hosts.

The commercialization of Bilibili and the difficulty of UP hosts to realize their profits have always been the focus of public attention. Xinbochang found that perhaps in order to seek more ways to realize their profits, many UP hosts have also opened accounts on Douyin, and even opened windows to promote their products.

Can developing outside the site solve their monetization problem? And behind the "stop updating trend" of UP masters on Bilibili, is it because Bilibili is not commercially viable, or is it because of the monetization anxiety of the entire content creation market itself?

01 New moves of B station live e-commerce

After the UP "stop updating" controversy fermented for more than half a month, Bilibili has made new moves for the monetization of UP masters.

On April 13, Bilibili released an "important matter" in the official live streaming group: it announced that its UP host business cooperation platform, Huahuo, will open the live streaming order function on April 17. UP hosts who have already settled in the Huahuo platform and opened the live streaming function can fill in the live streaming quotation through the questionnaire. UP hosts who have already submitted and completed live streaming quotation can use the live streaming order function after Huahuo launches it.

The so-called functions are actually more of a cooperation channel that Bilibili has added for UP hosts, and it is also an operational promoter that further opens up the commercialization of UP hosts to brands on Huohuahuo.

Bilibili’s live streaming has been developing for some time, and there have been excellent cases such as UP host Mr. Mi Deng, but the overall business performance is tepid. Therefore, in the official community of more than 200 people, only 3 UP hosts responded to this “important matter”.

On the one hand, the platform is exploring the pace of commercialization, and on the other hand, UP hosts have chosen to stop updating because it is becoming increasingly difficult to make money.

In early April, after @-LKs-, one of the top 100 UP hosts on B station in 2022, and @Xu Da Wang, a well-known UP host in the gaming area, announced the suspension of updates, #B station UP hosts launched a suspension trend# became a hot search. Someone also sorted out the top 100 UP hosts on B station in 2019 @Weird Jun, and some UP hosts with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of fans stopped updating, and there were media reports that a UP host with millions of fans used a credit card to pay rent...

As a result, the topic of Bilibili's weakening traffic revenue and difficulty in monetization has continued to be discussed in recent times.

On the other hand, Ma Baoguo, who has gained billions of views on Bilibili but was banned by Bilibili for some reason, recently started live streaming on Douyin to sell goods. Although the sales volume is not high, the attention it has received is not low, and it has opened up his Douyin commercialization path.

Some media even joked: "Except for Ma Baoguo, no one believes that the UP host of Station B is making money."

In fact, as early as September 2022, some UP hosts with nearly one million fans on Bilibili announced that they would stop updating, and some UP hosts complained during live broadcasts, saying that the platform's traffic share revenue had dropped sharply. Now that such topics are mentioned again, on the one hand, the public pays high attention to the commercialization of Bilibili, and on the other hand, it reflects that it seems to be increasingly difficult for content creators to monetize.

02 UP hosts try out Douyin

So, now that multi-platform development has become the norm, is it possible for UP hosts to move beyond Bilibili and monetize on other platforms with rich commercial resources and mature commercialization?

In fact, Ma Baoguo, who became popular on Bilibili and then made money by live streaming on Douyin, is not an isolated case.

Xinbochang sorted out the development of the top 100 UP hosts on Bilibili in 2022 on Douyin, including the number of Douyin fans, monetization methods, etc., and ranked them according to their number of fans on Bilibili, and counted the top 20 in total——

It can be seen that among the 20 UP hosts counted, 16 UP hosts have already settled in Douyin, and only four UP hosts, Muyu Shuixin, Liangfeng Kaze, Elizabeth Shu, and Panshi, have not yet opened a Douyin account.

However, their development on Douyin is not the same——

In terms of the number of fans, there is a clear gap between the top 100 UP hosts on Bilibili and the two platforms, and most Douyin accounts have much fewer fans than Bilibili. For example, Lao Fanqie, who has 18.41 million fans on Bilibili, has only 1.04 million fans on Douyin.

However, there are exceptions. For example, Wuxian Xiaoliang's popular science daily life has only 8.57 million fans on B station, but has 23.17 million fans on Douyin.

On Douyin, short video showcase sales and live streaming sales are the main ways to monetize. Among the top 20 UP hosts, 7 have opened Douyin showcases, but judging from the sales of goods, the sales of UP hosts through short videos are not optimistic. The sales of most UP hosts’ Douyin showcases range from dozens to hundreds, and the data is bleak. Only Wuxian Xiaoliang’s daily sales of popular science products are over 100,000.

According to the data from Guoji Feigua, Wuxian Xiaoliang has added 23 short videos in the past three months, with video sales of 5,000-7,000 and video sales reaching 250,000-500,000.

In addition, from the perspective of live streaming sales, among the 20 UP hosts, only Wuqiong Xiaoliang and Xiaopiampianshuo Dapian have opened the live streaming sales function, while the rest of the UP hosts only update video content on their homepages without any other actions.

It seems that UP hosts may just use Douyin as a distribution platform. However, this is also inseparable from the number of fans that UP hosts have on Douyin.

For example, Wuxian Xiaoliang, who opened a Douyin showcase and live-streamed products, has the highest number of Douyin fans among the top 20 UP hosts, and is also a top expert in Douyin's popular science track. His Douyin fans are even 14.6 million more than Bilibili. Such a large number of fans is enough to support his commercialization on Douyin.

Data shows that Wuxian Xiaoliang has held three live broadcasts to sell goods in the past 90 days, with an average of 360,000 viewers per show, live broadcast sales of 25,000 to 50,000, and sales of goods worth 1 million to 2.5 million.

In addition, Wuxian Xiaoliang and Shougong Geng have also joined Douyin's creator profit-sharing plan, and advertising videos participating in the event can be seen on their Douyin homepages.

Whether it is Bilibili or TikTok, advertiser orders are the most important way for creators to monetize.

From January this year to now, only 6 of the 20 top 100 UP hosts have embedded advertisements in their Douyin videos and monetized by accepting orders from advertisers on the platform. Among them, Dean Xiaochao, Wuxian Xiaoliang's Popular Science Daily, Handmade Geng, and Ermao's Fan released 1 advertising video, while Sheep Cooking and Film and Television Hurricane released 2 advertising videos.

Sheep Cuisine is the top UP host in the food track of Bilibili, with 10.82 million fans on Bilibili. She joined Douyin in 2018 and has accumulated 7 million fans on Douyin in a few years. Sheep Cuisine has released two advertising videos on Douyin since January this year. One was released on March 24th, in the #Challenge to Make a Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains with Cream Cake, which embedded an advertisement for Fotile Steaming and Bake Cooking Machine, and the other was on April 7th, which embedded an advertisement for KFC Egg Tarts.

Under the advertisement video, a fan joked in the comment area: "There is no warning on the progress bar, so there must be an advertisement." Sheep Cuisine replied to the fan, "Thanks to Fangtai, I didn't fail," indirectly confirming that it accepted advertisements on Douyin.

Judging from the dismal data, the UP hosts who have a hard time making a living on Bilibili do not seem to be optimistic about commercialization on the Douyin platform, and only a few can make money on Douyin.

03 The essence is content monetization anxiety

In general, even after going to Douyin, the UP hosts of Bilibili still choose to stick to their own content style. Most of them hope to support themselves with the content and do not want to extend their tentacles to live streaming e-commerce.

As the well-known game blogger Qi Xiaodian said: Most long video UP hosts are no longer able to adapt to and do not want to adapt to the era of short video fragmented information. Many UP hosts who believe that good content can support themselves do not want to cater to the era of short videos. The slogan "Content is king" that has been shouted since 2015 has now caused great confusion for many people.

Previously, the "UP host suspension trend" became a hot search, and people inside and outside the industry began to discuss B station's commercialization difficulties and content monetization issues.

Many people in the industry believe that the trend of B station UP hosts stopping updating is a very normal thing.

L, the head of a leading MCN agency, believes that, compared with the entire content disk, it is actually quite normal that so many people are sensitive about it.

Qi Xiaodian also expressed his own opinion: " In fact, many bloggers on Douyin, Kuaishou and Weibo have stopped updating in the past six months. Only the UP hosts on Bilibili will make a video with a sense of ritual to explain to everyone."

Most of the reasons for stopping are because the income is insufficient to make ends meet. Behind this, it has become a consensus that the competition in the content industry is becoming increasingly fierce.

Good content can attract highly loyal users and have the vitality to last through cycles, but the problem is that good content also means high costs and long production cycles.

Xiao Pian Pian Shuo Da Pian, one of the top 100 UP hosts on Bilibili, once said on Weibo that most of the popular UP hosts on Bilibili are long-form videos, but if they want to continuously produce high-quality long-form videos, the costs behind it will be higher. Because the video production cycle is long, the human cost of the team will increase if they want to maintain a normal update frequency, which can easily lead to the UP host's "spending more than they earn".

On Bilibili, the main way for UP hosts to monetize is through subsidies from the platform and advertising orders. However, with the dramatic changes in the industry environment, platforms have been reducing costs and increasing efficiency, so advertising orders have become the most important way for UP hosts to monetize. However, the public opinion ecology of Bilibili is quite harsh on advertising orders. Too many advertisements will arouse users' disgust, causing many UP hosts to be very cautious.

In fact, apart from the platform, the anxiety of the content market itself is the deeper reason why creators find it difficult to monetize.

In the early days, driven by the short video trend, brands invested a lot of their budgets in bloggers, focusing on exposure and brand promotion without overly pursuing conversion effects.

However, with the popularity of live streaming e-commerce, brands no longer believe in the traffic myth of this industry after rounds of market education. They choose platforms, bloggers to place ads, research the target groups, and maximize the investment-output ratio.

Compared with visible and intangible traffic, brands now pay more attention to actual and efficient conversion capabilities, which can bring tangible results to the brand.

Previously, the marketing director of a leading MCN in Hangzhou said that brands are becoming more and more "tricky" and professional. "When you make a proposal, you will inevitably be asked which of the 5A groups your audience belongs to." (Note: The 5A model is a concept proposed by marketing guru Philip Kotler in "Marketing Revolution 4.0", which corresponds to Aware, Appeal, Ask, Act, and Advocate, revealing the closeness of the relationship between users and brands)

Some people believe that the current so-called "stop updating trend" of video platforms will continue, and Bilibili is just the beginning. On the one hand, the industry competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and on the other hand, the brands are becoming more and more demanding. UPs can either continue to move forward with the burden, or they can only choose to stop updating and give up.

So, the problem is still left to the platforms. How to cultivate the soil for content growth for creators so that they can make a living from content? Can creators still usher in the spring of content monetization?

Author: Xiaolongguo Editor: Xiaohong

Source: WeChat public account "New Broadcasting Field"